Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"I am of a different opinion, then," answered the obstinate Klaus.

"Then be so good as to keep that opinion to yourself," I said, very earnestly.

I had good reasons for enjoining the honest Klaus to a silence which was so burdensome to him; for, beside the fact that he really had a ridiculously exaggerated opinion of me, his imprudence might be of serious inconvenience to me, and indeed might close against me the way which I was firmly resolved to tread. I wished to work my way up from the ranks in the calling to which I had devoted my life, remembering the saying of my never-to-be-forgotten teacher, that the true artist must understand the hand-work of his art. So for the present I was what I desired to be--a hand-worker, a laborer in the roughest work--and every one took me for just that, which was precisely what I wished.

My past history I had veiled under a simple story, which found ready belief with the simple fellows around me. I was the son of a seafaring man in Klaus Pinnow's native town. We had known each other from our boyhood; I had made up my mind to be a smith like him, and had worked awhile as an apprentice with his father. But ten years ago I had gone to sea, and had voyaged about the whole world as sailor, as ship's-carpenter, and, as ship's-blacksmith, and only returned home a short time before with the determination of quitting the sea for the future, and earning an honest living on land, for which purpose I was now learning the smith's craft regularly, which I had practiced as an apprentice.

I was seldom under the necessity of corroborating this story by accounts of my past adventures; and if now and then, when we were off work, some one more curious than the rest spoke of my travels, I understood enough of navigation and voyages, and had mixed too much with captains and mates, and read too many tales of the sea, not to be able to play the part of Sindbad for half an hour. One of my principal stories, the scene of which was laid somewhere in the Malay Archipelago, in which there was plenty of hot work and plenty of pirates knocked in the head, had procured me in the shop the nickname of "The Malay," which I bore until--but I must not anticipate.

I was all the more readily believed to be what I gave myself out for, as I conformed my habits exactly to those of the common workman. I was dressed neither better nor worse than the rest; I ate my breakfast from my hand, as did the others; I dined at a cheap cook-shop, in which some fifty other workmen took their dinners. The only luxury which I allowed myself out of the little money which I had brought from the prison was a better lodging than workmen of my class were accustomed to or could afford; and this deviation from the rule was due as much to necessity as to any consideration of comfort or taste. I could not, if I wished to prosecute my theoretical studies, live in a quarter where the streets were noisy until deep in the night with the rattling of vehicles, and too often with the uproar of drunken workmen in conflict with the police, and where, in the overcrowded houses, the ticking, pulsating, clattering clock of human life never stood still a moment.

For several days, during which I was Klaus's guest, I had looked about for a suitable lodging; and at last I found one.

Adjoining the factory was a large lot of ground, which was covered in the most singular way with buildings, some half-finished and others only commenced. According to the account of the old man who, in a half-finished porter's lodge, exercised a sort of guardianship over the place, the whole had been intended as an establishment to compete with Streber's. But the projector of the scheme had failed, the property was put up at auction and bought in by a wealthy creditor, who thought the best thing he could do with it for the present was to leave all things as they were.

"You see," said the old man, "he hopes that in two or three years the ground will be worth three times as much as it now is; and perhaps also that the commerzienrath must of necessity take the thing off his hands at any price, since it is of the utmost importance to him to keep a rival from starting up, so to speak, under his very nose. And then the commerzienrath has to put up new buildings, for they are so crowded they can hardly work, and where is he to build if not just on these lots? But he thinks it over, and my employer thinks it over, and now they have both been thinking it over for these two years. Recently he has been here again and looked over the place for the twentieth or fiftieth time, I believe; but it did not seem that he had come to any determination. Well, it is all one to me; and if you, sir, would like one of the rooms in the garden-house, your beard may be grown two inches longer before you have to move out."

The satirical old porter pleased me well, and the garden-house still better. True it was a mere boast when the man spoke of "one of the rooms," while in reality it had but one in which a human being could possibly live, while the others, without doors or windows, seemed rather to be a caravanserai for homeless cats: an appearance which I found afterwards to be fully borne out by the facts. The little house, which was probably originally intended for the residence of the owner or manager, was planned in a very pleasing Italian style. An easy flight of stairs led to the rooms referred to, in which, to judge from the spots of ink on the unscrubbed floors, and several three-legged drawing-tables, and other similar bits of ruinous furniture, the architect of the building must have had his office; on the other side was a balcony. In front of the stairs a grass-plot had been designed, but at present it was only a plot without the grass; and similarly a great free-stone basin in the centre lacked the Triton and the water; and the trellis, which ran up between the windows, as high up as the projecting eaves, lacked its Venetian ivy. But I cared nothing for these deficiencies; on the contrary I regarded them as pointing to a better future, and they harmonized thus with my own frame of mind, which also looked from a barren present to richer and fairer days to come. Then this ruinous lodging had the real practical advantage of suitable cheapness, and also that of securing me the quiet which was so necessary to my studies; and, to tell the whole, the old man had told me that the young lady who had accompanied the commerzienrath, and must have been the old gentleman's daughter, had clapped her hands when she saw the garden-house, and said it was charming, and she would like to live in it.